


live with a man who knows you

by jinlian



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-14 08:11:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9170143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jinlian/pseuds/jinlian
Summary: Victor has spent nearly his entire life being cold, from being born in the dead of winter through growing up in northern Russia to dedicating himself to a career on ice rinks. He’s never thought much of the cold—until spends enough time feeling warm. (Or: adjusting to domestic life in St. Petersburg, the fanfic)





	

**Author's Note:**

> do you live with a man who knows you / are you living the life you chose?

Call it a weakness, but if there is one thing that will keep Victor lingering in a store for hours, it is the search for a perfect pair of leather gloves.

 

He has a whole drawer full of them in his closet, bunched behind soft-knitted scarves and few mismatched fuzzy socks. Yuuri discovers this when helping Victor pack up his room in Hasetsu, his eyes wide with a disbelief Victor rarely gets the pleasure of seeing on him in such a mundane setting. There have to be at least fifteen pairs, he points out. Yuuri pulls each pair one by one from the fingertips and deposits them on the floor in front of him in a damning spread of evidence. For what on _earth_ does Victor need so many pairs of gloves?

 

The answer is simple: absolutely nothing.

 

Victor likes the scent of leather. It’s that somewhat sweet, somewhat sharp tang that wears away with age but never fully disappears. He breathes it in from his hands when it clings to his palms and cracks it in the air when he curls his knuckles, flexes fingers with each new glove pulled snug. Good leather, _soft_ leather is pleasant to touch. And most importantly, whether each pair of gloves is lined with fur or fabric or nothing at all, they keep out the cold. 

 

He jokes to Yuuri that since he has to wear cheaper, moisture-wicking gloves for exercise when he’s skating, he’s had to buy so many other nice ones to make up for all the lost time. Yuuri rolls his eyes and tells him this is absolutely terrible logic. 

 

Victor laughs and falls back with his head in Yuuri’s lap, holding up a white fleece-lined glove to Yuuri’s cheek.  “Hm,” Victor murmurs. “Perhaps a brighter color would be better with your skin-tone, Yuuri.”

 

Yuuri swats his hand away but doesn’t let it go. He’s red-cheeked but smiling, and Victor says his name again: _“Yuuri.”_

 

Victor has never used endearments for Yuuri in the way he’s heard Mila use for her boyfriends, or Georgi in his tales of Anya, even Takeshi to Yuuko in those foreign snippets of conversation in a language that has slowly to Victor become as familiar as any memory. It isn’t that none of them would fit, exactly. Victor tries them sometimes when he thinks of Yuuri, the nicknames slipping easily from one to the next: _dorogoy, pryanichek, lyubimyy, lastochka._ Each one falls easily into the meaning of _Yuuri._ It’s just that _Yuuri_ is the best for the job, encompassing everything _about_ him that is so endearing. Victor carries the sound and flavor of him on his tongue, rolling the name each time he says it, finding that quality that makes even a shared name something that no one else can mimic.

 

“Try these,” he says and holds out a dark red pair made for Russian winters.

 

Rather than sprawled between half-filled boxes in his once-bedroom in Hasetsu, Victor’s hang-up now is in a St. Petersburg department store. Yuuri stares at him as though Victor has just suggested he strip then and there (which—don’t get Victor wrong—would not be entirely displeasing).

 

“Victor, I don’t need another pair of gloves.”

 

Victor doesn’t back down and merely offers the gloves again with the best wide-eyed plea he can muster. He can see the argument forming behind Yuuri’s eyes, the slight twist of his lips that indicate that Yuuri is preparing to use his most demanding voice to drag them away once and for all from the glove display where Victor has kept hem now for more than twenty minutes. He has to make his own move quickly. If Yuuri has a chance to protest any further, Victor knows without question that he’ll be utterly incapable of turning him down.

 

“Victor—“

 

“I’ll put them on for you,” Victor offers, and he reaches for Yuuri’s hands.

 

Yuuri lets him, releasing the tension he’s bunched in his shoulders the way he does when he’s steeling himself for an objection. He softens—dwarfed a little in that too-big down coat he’s been wearing on snowy days, his unwound blue scarf slipping a little lower around his neck. He hasn’t entirely left behind his hesitance, Victor notices. Yuuri’s eyes are a little too narrowed, lips a little too pursed, and Victor stops with one of Yuuri’s hands halfway into the glove he’s easing onto his fingers.

 

Is it so strange, he wants to ask, being here like this with me?

 

But he doesn’t ask it. Victor suppresses a smile and turns Yuuri’s hand a little in his own. Of course it’s strange—or at least, it’s strange for Victor, to be standing here as they are with nothing on his mind but a new pair of gloves, by the side of a man who’s wearing his engagement ring. The glove still only halfway on, Victor brushes the pad of his thumb across that ring, smooth and still cold from the weather outside. He tugs up; and with one step closer to Yuuri, one arm curled neatly around his waist, Victor lowers his head and kisses Yuuri’s knuckles.

 

The strangest part, perhaps, is that Yuuri doesn’t pull away when he does this. Victor can hear the catch in Yuuri’s breathing, looks up to see that bright pink on his cheeks that isn’t a flush that just remains from the outside weather. It shouldn’t even _be_ strange at all: Victor kisses Yuuri’s hands daily, has kissed his lips parted between breaths, has kissed his neck beneath that thick blue scarf and every inch of skin below it. But that’s amazing in itself, when he thinks about it. This never stops startling him. It’s everything in this easy intimacy that Yuuri allows, and every morning Victor wakes up with Yuuri in his arms he feels just as amazed by it as every morning before.

 

Victor lowers his arms and finishes pulling the glove all the rest of the way on. “There,” he says, and does the next one, too. “How do those fit?”

 

Yuuri doesn’t bother curling his hands to test them. He doesn’t even look. Instead, Yuuri pushes Victor’s hair away from his face, cups his hand beneath beneath Victor’s jaw, and rises just slightly on his toes to return Victor’s kiss.

 

“It fits just fine.”

 

—————

 

It’s not until a week after moving in with Yuuri into their new apartment in St. Petersburg that Victor learns his fiancé can cook.

 

They spend their first week without furniture, surrounded by boxes and too tired at the end of every day of jet-lagged training to do more than find the next cheapest takeout down the street. Victor tosses the folded paper menus at Yuuri, who’s fussing through one of the boxes for _just_ the right sweater he wants to wear tomorrow, and Yuuri tosses them right back. “I can’t read Russian,” Yuuri reminds him, and Victor’s already grinning at the bossy set to Yuuri’s jaw. _“You_ choose what we’re eating and order it for us. I’ll eat whatever it is.”

 

Victor drops to his knees, more at Yuuri’s eye level where he’s sitting on the floor busy not-unpacking, and crawls towards him. _“Whatever_ it is?” he repeats, resting his chin on Yuuri’s shoulder.

 

“Mm,” Yuuri says without looking back at him, and Victor takes his chance to strike. He kisses the bare skin left exposed by the neckline of Yuuri’s too-big t-shirt, the curve right where shoulder meets neck. Yuuri jolts, but Victor is still kissing, marking a path right up Yuuri’s jaw to his ear.

 

“Isn’t there anything you’d really like to taste?” he whispers. “Something on your tongue that you think I might enjoy, too?”

 

And Yuuri, blushing so hot that Victor can practically feel the heat on his cheeks, pushes Victor’s face away with an open palm. Victor falls away and rolls onto his back, biting back the smile that fights to take control of his face.

 

“Yuuri, _Yuuri,”_ he sings, a hand outstretched in the air. Yuuri covers his own face for a moment, buried in his right hand as he tries to compose himself, and when he looks up he’s pushed his glasses up off his nose and settled them on top of his head to hold back his hair.

 

“Order the food, Victor,” Yuuri says, slapping his hand down on the floor just next to Victor’s shoulder. Victor can’t hold back his smile any more.

 

 _“Wow,”_ he breathes, staring up into Yuuri’s glare, which is still pink through the command Yuuri struggles to write into every line of face. “It seems that I have no choice. You’re very demanding, Yuuri.”

 

“I think you’ll live,” Yuuri tells him, and Victor can’t help but agree. So he orders the food, and Yuuri finds his sweater, and neither of them continue to put much more effort into unpacking.

 

They play this scene almost every night for the first week, boxes stacked and piles of clothes strewn and piled in every corner. Victor has never lived in such disarray before, but he doesn’t mind it as much as he’d thought he would. It’s a happy disarray, after all, even if he thinks it could stand a few more standard comforts—like tables and chairs and a real mattress rather than the air bed they’ve set up in the bedroom. He’s perfectly content.

 

Victor points out that Yuuri is mostly responsible for the mess and clothes strewn everywhere.

 

Yuuri retorts that maybe Victor could help with the unpacking for once.

 

Victor edges towards the suspicious box labeled in clear, blocky English: VICTOR DON’T LOOK. “I’ll start here, then,” he says from beneath a mask of innocence. “I wonder what it could be?”

 

Yuuri turns a solid shade of red and flies at him. They crash to the floor, Victor laughing, his shirt pulled halfway up his chest as Yuuri scrabbles to hold him back. He’s laughing even harder when Yuuri’s wrestles turn into tickles, and tickles turn into embraces, and embraces turn into skimming hands and whispers across bare skin as Victor’s laughter fades into breathlessness.

 

Yuuri seems content, too.

 

They become intimately familiar with that floor during the first week. There’s no carpeting anywhere in the apartment; each room is floored instead with creaky wooden floors scuffed and stained from years of changing residents. Victor doesn’t mind the cold hardwood beneath his bare feet, the outdoor cold of a St. Petersburg winter creeping through every crack and every crack and crevice in the building. He can feel it beneath his cheek when he falls asleep on the floor the very first night and hear it howling outside. It hurls itself against the windows and whistles for entry, begs for sanctuary, but there’s no room for it to be let inside. Inside Victor and Yuuri lie curled beneath the thick down blanket they’ve wrapped around themselves, their legs tangled and hands gripped tight. Despite the patterns drawn on Victor’s skin by the hard lines of the floor, it’s the feeling of Yuuri’s touch that lingers and the warmth of his breath on Victor’s neck as they cling together—there alone in the dark, with nothing else allowed in their tiny world beneath that blanket but each other.

 

It isn’t until the end of that week that the furniture finally begins to arrive.

 

It’s just in time for the first full weekend they have together in St. Petersburg, and Yakov allows them an extra day off practice in sympathy for the mingled demands of jet-lag and an international moving process all while putting in full days of training on and off the ice. He tells Victor it’s as much to give the rest of his rink a break as it is to give Victor and Yuuri one, too. Victor is grateful. Yakov, for all his gruffness and edges, has always been kind.

 

The first night spent sleeping on a real mattress in a real bed is as blissful as Victor had hoped it would be. He’s asleep nearly the moment his head hits the pillow. There’s no need for him and Yuuri to sleep so closely as they had been doing on the floor any more with the added warmth of a real bed and extra sheets, but they do it anyway. It’s only natural, after all: Yuuri’s arm slung lazily across Victor’s stomach, Victor threading his fingers through Yuuri’s before he falls asleep, one thumb brushing back and forth, back and forth across his hand. It has become such a familiar, comforting heat over the past week that when Victor finally wakes in the morning he knows immediately that he is alone in the bed by the chill that greets him. 

 

Victor is, almost without fail, the first awake every morning. He’s grown so used to extracting himself from the comfort of his tangle with Yuuri that the empty chill on his back causes him to shiver.

 

“…Yuuri?”

 

It’s— _uncomfortable._ And far more than it should be. Victor is twenty-eight years old, and he has woken up alone in bed for most of his life—even most of his life since Yuuri entered it. He stumbles out of bed, and the cold shock of the bare floor on his feet ( _We need a rug,_ Victor thinks) snaps him out of his half-asleep stupor.

 

Sunlight slants in broken bars through the window, shimmering just brightly enough to tell Victor it’s still early in the morning. A few items of clothes lie rumpled in front of the still-mostly-empty closet, but arranged just differently than Victor remembers they were last night. Yuuri’s sneakers and gym bag are still on the floor just inside the closet door. And something from just outside the bedroom door smells… sweet.

 

Victor runs a hand through his hair in a half-hearted attempt at combing it as he sorts through the clothes left behind. It’s significantly colder outside of the bed than it was beneath the covers, and just the thin pair of sweatpants he left on overnight isn’t doing it. He finds two socks—not matching, but good enough—before he realizes the shirt he’d tossed aside before crawling into bed is missing.

 

He exhales his laugh in a single, quiet breath. With such an obvious culprit, Victor gives up on the shirt and snags one of Yuuri’s sweatshirts instead, yanking it over his head and delivering swift ruin to the semblance of order he’d given his hair just moments ago. It’s small on him (not surprising, as Yuuri’s shorter, and his frame just a little less broad) but not _too_ small, since Yuuri often wears his clothes a little large, and though the sleeves fall just short of his wrists Victor’s top half is now shielded from any wandering drafts. He lifts the collar and takes a deep, satisfied breath.

 

Even without Yuuri here, Victor is still surrounded by _Yuuri._

 

Yuuri isn’t _gone,_ though. Victor’s deductions from the clues left in the bedroom are confirmed when he steps outside into the hall, where he can see across the living room into the open kitchen and the reason for that sweet smell in the air. Yuuri, as it turns out, is cooking breakfast.

 

Victor takes a few curious steps down the hall before Yuuri notices that he’s awake. There are a few open cartons of milk and eggs on the kitchen countertops and a bowl of berries somewhere beside it all. Yuuri himself is standing over the stove in nothing but his boxers and Victor’s missing shirt, his glasses slipping precariously down his nose as he tilts what must be a newly-bought pan filled with batter in his hand.

 

He’s still focused on the cooking enough that he hasn’t noticed Victor’s emergence from the bedroom, but not because he seems to be struggling. Yuuri is concentrating, his brows tucked and jaw set just so, and he flips the pancake. The motion is easy and practiced. Of course, Victor thinks, _of course,_ Yuuri had grown up in a family-run inn, and he’d lived for five years in a foreign country. Of course Yuuri knows how to cook. Even Victor can make a decent meal. It isn’t surprising that he knows his way around a kitchen; Victor had just never considered it before.

 

Victor takes a few more steps forward before he realizes just what else is sitting out on the counter. The batter. The condensed milk and jam sitting next to a stack of paper plates. The way Yuuri handles the pan. Victor realizes with a start that Yuuri is making _blinchiki._

 

He’s had enough waiting for Yuuri to notice him. Victor’s sliding the rest of the way down the hall and across the living room, his socks slipping across the boards, and his arms outstretched towards his fiancé.

 

“Good morning, Yuuri!”

 

Yuuri looks up in some surprise just in time for Victor to wrap both arms around his stomach—thankfully _after_ he’s already set down the scalding pan. Victor settles against Yuuri as he peers over his shoulder, cheek pressed against cheek, and tugs playfully at the hem of his own shirt that Yuuri’s wearing.

 

“I missed you.”

 

Yuuri is mostly able to ignore his new human attachment and reach for the bowl of batter, since Victor has left his arms mostly uninhibited. He’s biting his lip, but a smile tugs at his mouth anyway.

 

“You leave before I wake up all the time. I wanted to surprise you.”

 

Victor hums, swaying with Yuuri as they turn back and forth between the counter and the stove. “Yes, he says softly. “Blinchiki?”

 

Yuuri is suddenly very busy with the pan.

 

“Well, they’re easy enough to make. It’s nothing special. I don’t even know if these are all the things you usually eat with them. I just thought it might be—familiar. For you.”

 

In response, Victor says nothing. He buries his face in Yuuri’s shoulder and doesn’t bother holding back a smile.

 

—————

 

“You sold your last apartment,” Yuuri says.

 

Kirov Park is busy at this time of day, but it feels quiet despite that. The snow that fell just that morning muffles the sounds of life running through it—children throwing snowballs at each other through the trees and parents shouting for them not to wander too far, ice crunching beneath pairs and pairs of heavy winter boots. Somehow, the whole island seems smaller.

 

Victor lifts his hands to his face as he considers Yuuri’s words, cupping them to his mouth and breathing hot. He’d forgotten his gloves when they’d left in the morning and hadn’t realized until it was too late to go back to get them.

 

“Yes,” is all he says in response.

 

“Why?” Yuuri asks.

 

This isn’t a line of questioning Victor expected to receive. He stares at Yuuri, wondering if there’s an explanation for it, but the answer isn’t anywhere in the honest curiosity of his partner’s eyes. Victor lowers his hands, slowly, and shrugs.

 

“I didn’t need to keep it. I knew where I wanted to be.”

 

It’s satisfactory, if not still surprising, the way he can still make Yuuri blush even when all he’s saying is simple truth. Yuuri’s cheeks turn a deeper shade of red than they already are from being chapped and battered by the wind, and Victor resists the urge to warm them up himself.

 

“Didn’t you live there for years, though? Don’t you miss it, even a little?”

 

“Yuuri,” Victor says, reaching for his hand, “It’s just an apartment.”

 

Yuuri’s hand is hot in Victor’s. Even the band of his ring is warm against his skin. Victor squeezes his fingers lightly, assuringly.

 

“I just worry sometimes,” Yuuri says, looking determinedly ahead with an obvious refusal to look back at Victor, “that you miss the things you left behind for me.”

 

And there Victor stops—dead in his tracks, unable to breathe as though all ability has suddenly been knocked out of him. This startles Yuuri, who finally jerks back to look at him, and Victor’s vision swims around him except for the center point that is the man in front of him.

 

He finally manages to take a breath. It rushes back into his lungs, an icy flood of air. _“Yuuri,”_ Victor says as he lets that breath back out, and even he is somewhat surprised to hear his voice crack so blatantly. “Yuuri, I would gladly leave it all behind again, and more, for the new things I’ve gained since then.”

 

It’s with another startled realization that he sees _tears_ in Yuuri’s eyes, and Yuuri’s free hand is cupping Victor’s cheek just as Victor had imagined doing for Yuuri just moments earlier. Victor turns his head, his lips to the palm of Yuuri’s gentle hand, and holds him there as they are.

 

“New life—new feelings, and new color. You keep me so warm, _moyo solnyshko_. My Yuuri.”

 

“You know I love you, Victor,” Yuuri whispers, and in the calm of the snow his voice is only for them.

 

“I know,” Victor says, and the most surprising thing of all is that he does. “Yuuri, my Yuuri, _my_ Yuuri. I know. I love you, too.”

 

Yuuri’s hand drops from his cheek, but the other merely grips tighter as they turn to step forward together through the ice and cold.

**Author's Note:**

> You can also find this posted on my Tumblr [here](http://jinlian.tumblr.com/post/155311809652/live-with-a-man-who-knows-you).
> 
> This one gave me an unusual amount of difficulty to write, but I really, really wanted to do it anyway.
> 
> This is the second of a few fics I plan to write for follower requests after I hit a milestone on Tumblr about a week ago. @subteraneans and @demisexualmako both asked me for domesticity in St. Petersburg, and @comet-kind requested something fluffy and sweet and snowy for the season. The two requests ended up in combination here. 
> 
> Thanks to @subteraneans for helping me with Russian terms of endearments, and happy belated birthday to @comet-kind, who shares the day with Victor!
> 
> дорогой - dorogoy - dear  
> пряничек - pryanichek - gingerbread  
> любимый - lyubimyy - loved one  
> ласточка - lastochka - bird/swallow, referring to someone graceful  
> моё солнышко - moyo solnyshko - my little sun


End file.
